THERMAL (John Butcher / Andy Moor / Thomas Lehn) formed in 2001, three musicians from different musical backgrounds, evolving along their personal routes to meet in free improvisations. For twenty years they’ve been taking their subtle and explosive music throughout Europe. Unsounds released their first album Thermal in 2003. In 2023 the trio of quiet giants comes back with Ice in a Hot World, a new album recorded live in Avignon. The Thermal powerhouse has become highly confident but spontaneity and intuition are at the core of their performance at all times.

Tracklist

1. Dreams Are Fraying (12:56)
2. Autumn Fireflies (17:34)
3. Echoes of a Clucking Tongue (15:12)
4. Back to Vapour (3:46)
5. Ice in a Hot World (6:06)

Twenty years of working together, and in other formats, turned Thermal into a powerful and intrepid unit, always searching for uncompromising, mysterious and unchartered sonic frontiers.

Dreams Are Fraying (excerpt)

Echoes of a Clucking Tongue (excerpt)

Ice in a Hot World (excerpt)

Credits

John Butcher - tenor and soprano saxophones
Andy Moor - guitar
Thomas Lehn - analogue synthesizer
All compositions by John Butcher (PRS), Andy Moor (PRS) and Thomas Lehn (GEMA).
All tracks recorded by Bruno Levée on 8th February 2020 at AJMI, Avignon, France.
Mixed by Thomas Lehn, mastered by Andy Moor.
Cover photo by Andy Moor, design by Isabelle Vigier.
Production Unsounds 2023. Album release March 2023.

Biographies

John Butcher

John is well known as a saxophonist who attempts to engage with the uniqueness of time and place. His music ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and unusual acoustics. Since the early 80s he has collaborated with hundreds of artists – including Derek Bailey, Eddie Prevost, Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Fred Frith, Okkyung Lee, John Tilbury, Christian Marclay and Matthew Shipp. Additionally he values occasional encounters - from the WDR Sinfonieorchester and EX Orkest to duos with Akio Suzuki, Keiji Haino, David Toop, Sophie Agnel and Joe McPhee. He has been a presence on Unsounds records from the inception of the label more than twenty years ago, starting with the re-release of his debut solo album 13 Friendly Numbers, with many albums to follow, including collaborations with Magda Mayas, Tony Buck, Burkhard Stangl and his duo with Andy Moor.

Andy Moor

Andy began his musical career in Edinburgh, Scotland playing guitar with the four piece band Dog Faced Hermans. He moved to the Netherlands to join the internationally acclaimed agit-prop post-punk group The Ex with whom he has remained a member for over thirty years. Since then Moor's work has evolved outside of the traditional band set-up into solo work, and many collaborations, with long standing collaborations with Cypriot composer Yannis Kyriakides, French sound poet Anne James Chaton and Lebanese saxophonist Christine Abdelnour, amongst others. Moor is also a has composer of soundtracks for films, lworking recently with Iranian filmmaker Bani Khoshnoudi. His latest projects include the quartet Lean Left and The Heretics project with Anne James Chaton. The end of 2021 also saw Andy begin work as a live DJ and radio producer leading to work with Amsterdam based Echobox Radio with whom he broadcasts a monthly live show. Entitled Blueprints For A Blackout these are archived on Mixcloud.

Thomas Lehn

A pianist and performer of contemporary music since the early 1980s, Thomas became widely known for his performing and producing of live-electronic music from the EMS Synthi A, a modular instrument which allows for great spontaneity in the musical process. He was trained as a sound engineer and pianist at the music academies in Detmold and Cologne from 1979 to 1987. He has been active in both classical chamber music and jazz ensembles throughout the 1980s. Gradually his musical practice of interpretation and improvisation have expanded from classical to contemporary musics. Lehn has performed at major festivals around the world, also through the Goethe-Institutes network. Long term collaborations are ensembles like Konk Pack, Toot, Thermal, Mimeo, Speak Easy, 6ix or duos with Marcus Schmickler, Tiziana Bertoncini and Gerry Hemingway. More recent are trios with John Butcher the pianists John Tilbury and Matthew Shipp, respectively, the trio Defuse with Xavier Charles and Roger Turner, and the duo Companion Species with Jennifer Walshe. He is founding member of the ensemble]h[iatus, which dedicates itself since 2006 to contemporary improvisation and interpretation, and has premiered commissioned works by a.o. Vinko Globokar, Anthony Pateras, Jennifer Walshe and Jürg Frey. As a synthesizer interpreter – live and in studio – he has realised works by Éliane Radigue, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Bogusław Schaeffer and Zbigniew Karkowski. He was soloist in the world premiere of Peter Jakober's Dort with Klangforum Wien at Musikprotokoll festival and - with soloist partner John Butcher - of Christopher Fox's Topophony recorded for hatARTnow with the WDR Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov.

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